2024 US Presidential Election

[SGR]

Speaking of Biden's press conference, he mixed up his Vice President with Donald Trump saying:

"Look, I wouldn't have picked Trump to be my vice president unless I thought she could win."

I know, I know. You all think this is silly. And yet...you still wonder what Trump would look like if he was Biden's VP...so I graciously present it to you - for those who are brave enough to click through the spoiler.

"GYATT"

[close]

[Paul Smeenus]

I'm not saying Biden isn't a basket case, he clearly is and I hope he steps down. But I'd vote for a ham sandwich over Trump.

[Paul Smeenus]

Hopefully this will convince Biden to step down

[Lisnaholic]

A 'servile crook'? So basically, any Republican currently in the betting markets? 

Come on @Lisnaholic, where's your bravery? Give me a name! 

^
Sorry, SGR, but I don't have much incentive to explore the potential guys in advance: why make myself angry, when in due course the media will do that for me. At least by then, it'll just be one VP guy to be disgusted about.
But how about you: do you have a "favourite" in the race?

Your framing did remind me of this recent article from The Atlantic, which I genuinely found to be an interesting insight into the inner workings of Trump's campaign, even though it's a bit of a long read.

It reminded me of it because Trump's campaign directors seem to believe that, if they lose, there's a very real chance that the state will send them to jail. Now if that's not high-stakes, I don't know what is

^ That's a very interesting quote, SGR, and furthur indication of what an all-or-nothing contest this is. If Republicans fear that losing the election could lead to criminal charges for their conduct, well, the Dems have similar worries about the implementation of Project 2025 and the total weaponisation of the DOJ, controlled by a President with a lust for vengence and complete immunity.
At one level, I see it like this: a vote for Dems = criminals will face accountability. A vote for GOP = innocent people will be targeted for prosecution, not for suspected crimes, but because of their political affiliation.
 (That scenario is easy enough to imagine because we've already seen how it looks with all those Gym Jordan investigative committees. Also corrupt Attorney General Bill Barr flying to Italy to ferret around for some non-existent conspiracy because he knew that was what Trump wanted. Let's not forget what a betrayal of the supposed impartiality of his office that was!) 

I didn't read the whole Atlantic article, but I was certainly creeped out by that photo at the top!

...you still wonder what Trump would look like if he was Biden's VP...so I graciously present it to you - for those who are brave enough to click through the spoiler.

"GYATT"

[close]

^ Remind me NEVER AGAIN to look at something you've put in a spoiler !
_________________________________

Like the Dems, I'm also vacillating about Biden stepping down or not. Have you noticed how the Biden press conference was labeled a "crucial opportunity" to prove his competence? The fact is that every public event from now on is going to scrutinized for blunders in the same way. That's why I'm leaning more towards him handing the batton to Kamala Harris - and perhaps being VP himself. I think that'd be an unorthodox move, but has these advantages: They could present themselves as a team, promoting the same agenda. As a younger woman of colour, KH ticks plenty of demographic boxes and could punch hard at Trump as being the too-old-to-be-Pres guy.

[SGR]

^
Sorry, SGR, but I don't have much incentive to explore the potential guys in advance: why make myself angry, when in due course the media will do that for me. At least by then, it'll just be one VP guy to be disgusted about.
But how about you: do you have a "favourite" in the race?

I was mostly just giving you a hard time 

Personally, I'd like a President Rand Paul, so it would make sense I'd like him as VP, but he's not even in consideration as far as I know. I think most politicians are either corrupt or have a lot of baggage to unearth, but I think Rand Paul probably has less than others due to my (perhaps naive) view of him as a good and decent man.

Another one I'd view as a good and decent man is Ben Carson. Despite some of the crazier things he's said, and his wacky religious views, I think at his core he's a good man. Problem is, some of the stuff he's said is so wacky and out of pocket (as is almost inevitable with hardcore Christians), I think he might turn out to be a political liability in a VP role. 

Tulsi Gabbard would be an interesting pick - though I'm not sure how she'd go down with Trump's base, given that she used to be a Democrat, is an independent now, and has said things before that are fairly anti-2A. She might help Trump among suburban women. But if the quotes from Trump's campaign heads in that Atlantic article are to be believed, Trump's campaign is not trying to increase turnout/support from suburban women, but rather they're targeting young men. Despite this, out of all the feasible possibilities, I think Tulsi might be my favored pick for Trump. She'd soften his image, and she, like Trump, seems to be rather anti-war/anti-intervention. Of course, the fact that she's quite attractive is a big plus (and, as far as we know, she's never killed a dog).

Ultimately, Trump will probably pick someone boring who he doesn't think will outshine him and someone who doesn't truly have ambitions to be President themselves (like Mike Pence). So Doug Burgum might make sense, but with a pick like him, I don't see what he adds to the campaign. Apparently, JD Vance leads the odds to be Trump's VP now. I don't reallly know much about the guy except that he's young and he wrote some book. I personally think he's too inexperienced to be VP.

^ That's a very interesting quote, SGR, and furthur indication of what an all-or-nothing contest this is. If Republicans fear that losing the election could lead to criminal charges for their conduct, well, the Dems have similar worries about the implementation of Project 2025 and the total weaponisation of the DOJ, controlled by a President with a lust for vengence and complete immunity.
At one level, I see it like this: a vote for Dems = criminals will face accountability. A vote for GOP = innocent people will be targeted for prosecution, not for suspected crimes, but because of their political affiliation.

I don't quite see it the same way that you do. There's a quote often attributed to Stalin's secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria that goes: "Give me the man, and I will find you the crime.". I think there's truth to this, in the sense that if a justice system is motivated enough, they can probably find a crime for almost anyone with a team of overzealous prosecutors, especially politicians/government actors. Fareed Zakaria, who has a show on CNN, said this in relation to the hush money case against Trump for example:

And yet this case is not simply one of the law in all its impartial majesty holding someone to account. The prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, is an elected district attorney who ran a campaign for that office boasting that he had helped sue Donald Trump "more than a hundred times." Even so, once elected and after looking over the evidence, he is reported to have put the case on the back burner, which triggered a storm of criticism from his Democratic base. He then reversed course and decided to pursue the case on a new basis, if reported accounts are correct, which goes like this: Trump's offense is to have violated New York state law by falsifying business records, but the statute of limitations for that misdemeanor has expired.

So Bragg's office will argue that the misdemeanor is actually tied to a felony because it violates federal election laws. But that violation is one that the Justice Department under both Trump and President Joe Biden looked at and decided against prosecution. That is, as many experts have pointed out, a novel legal theory. I should note that Trump denies any wrongdoing.

Given the circumstances, this case has the feel of zealous prosecutors minutely examining all possibilities to find some violation of the law. This upends the notion in Anglo-Saxon law that you first have a crime and then search for the criminal, rather than first looking at the person and searching to see if he or she has committed a crime.

Former Democrat Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo said this of Trump's hush money case:

Cuomo, in an interview Friday on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," argued that the case should have "never" been brought forward.

"If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn't running for president ... I'm the former AG of in New York, [and] I'm telling you that case would've never been brought."

"That's what is offensive to people, and it should be because if there's anything left, it's belief in the justice system," he added.

[...]

"And you want to talk about a threat to democracy: When you have this country believing you're playing politics with the justice system and you're trying to put people in jail or convict them for political reasons, then we have a real problem," Cuomo said Friday.

When you have notable people on the left coming out and saying stuff like this, you can see why Republicans might be dubious about the other cases. And that's kind of a problem, because when you're trying Trump for the much more serious crime of trying to overturn an election at the same time you're trying him on a case that's centered around how a legal payment was made, but the reimbursement of that payment was not marked correctly in Trump's accounts, it delegitimazes the other cases, even if it was technically a crime. It doesn't come off for many people as a blind and impartial application of the law, but rather smacks of a case brought for a political advantage (i.e. keeping Trump off the campaign trail, and tied up in court with all the associated legal fees).

Continuing with the idea of measured prosecutorial discretion being exercised, you also have, which is pretty unprecedented, former senior Republican White House officials being jailed over defying congressional subpoenas (contempt of Congress). Specifically, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, who are now both in jail on their 4 month sentence. In their defiance of the subpoenas, both tried to make the claim of 'executive privilege' (since they worked directly in the highest levels of the executive branch of the government), but that claim, which is typically respected by the DOJ, was not respected here. Former AG Eric Holder defied congressional subpoenas (during the Fast and Furious scandal investigation), but charges were declined from the DOJ because of executive privilege:

Legal experts noted this week in the runup to Thursday's House vote that President Barack Obama's assertion of executive privilege in the case would prevent a criminal prosecution under a practice dating to the Reagan administration.

The House also cited Holder for civil contempt to give it the option of filing a lawsuit compelling Holder to turn over documents sought by Oversight Committee investigators linked to the failed Operation Fast and Furious weapons crackdown. Such a case was expected to take years to complete.

A letter Friday from the Justice Department to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who led the investigation that brought the contempt charge against Holder, explained that "across administrations of both political parties, the longstanding position of the Department of Justice has been and remains that we will not prosecute" in such a circumstance.

"The department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General," concluded the letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the same thing Friday, saying "it is an established principle, dating back to the administration of President Ronald Reagan, that the Justice Department does not pursue prosecution in a contempt case when the president has asserted executive privilege."

In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner, was found in contempt of congress for defying a congressional subpoena and refusing to testify, invoking her fifth amendment rights, was also not proscuted by the DOJ.

Some more recent examples - Hunter Biden had defied a congressional subpoena from House Republicans for months, but instead of charging him with contempt of Congress, they held off and negotiated with his attorneys. And the most unsurprising one, the House held current AG Merrick Garland in contempt for defying a subpoena to release the audio of Biden's interview with Special Counsel Robert Hurr - the vote to charge him over it failed and the DOJ (which Garland is the head of) declined to prosecute him over it, citing, once again, executive privilege.

All this to say that both parties are and have been flouting conventions, flouting unstated agreements with each other. Both parties have now played their role in taking the genie out of the bottle, and where this goes in the future can't be certain.

I agree with you that if Trump wins, and the Republicans have congressional majorities, they will go after Democrats for their political affiliation. But I disagree that the people they go after will be 'innocent' in a technical sense. Because Republicans will 'find the crimes' to charge them with. They'll pull out that big fat book of laws, and they'll find something. And I believe the Democrats, should they win, will do the same thing to Republicans. That's why I think Trump's campaign team heads fear jail sentences if they lose. I wouldn't be surprised if Biden's campaign team heads have similar fears. It is easy to foresee, if Trump wins, the Republicans issuing subpoenas to Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas defies the subpoenas, claiming executive privilege. Trump's DOJ doesn't respect that privilege and decides to throw him in jail for four months. Because that's exactly what happened to Peter Navarro.

It's a sad state of affairs, but that appears to be the direction we're heading. And it's all thanks to continued deepening of political polarization in America.

I didn't read the whole Atlantic article, but I was certainly creeped out by that photo at the top!

I thought the same thing about the picture! 

It honestly reminded me of those old Soviet propaganda posters of Stalin:

Like the Dems, I'm also vacillating about Biden stepping down or not. Have you noticed how the Biden press conference was labeled a "crucial opportunity" to prove his competence? The fact is that every public event from now on is going to scrutinized for blunders in the same way. That's why I'm leaning more towards him handing the batton to Kamala Harris - and perhaps being VP himself. I think that'd be an unorthodox move, but has these advantages: They could present themselves as a team, promoting the same agenda. As a younger woman of colour, KH ticks plenty of demographic boxes and could punch hard at Trump as being the too-old-to-be-Pres guy.

I think switching the ticket that way would be a huge mess. VPs are supposed to be a 'backup plan'. I don't think you want your 'backup plan' to be an 81-year old that poeple are having questions about cognitively right now. I think you're on the right track though, but instead of actually switching up the ticket, keep the ticket the same, and change the messaging. Probably the easiest play, if Biden doesn't step down, is for the Democrats to say something like: "Look, we know he's old, but he's done a great job and he's proven he can beat Trump. One way or another, who you're really voting for here is Kamala Harris. Joe Biden will just help us get across the finish line." Like it or not, I'm not convinced there's any Democrat who could lead the ticket at this point and be a net benefit over Biden in defeating Trump. At the very least, the polls don't bear this out in my opinion.

All that being said, this media scrutiny of Biden does not feel natural to me. If it was one or two days of bad press after the debate, I'd buy that it was natural. But it's been the persistent media narrative for weeks now. Instead of the party bigwigs coming out in defense of Biden, they are instead casting doubt on Biden. Pelosi recently waffled in her support and wouldn't say directly if she supported Biden to continue or not. Then that George Clooney piece comes out about how he's calling for Biden to step down. Then we learn that Clooney checked with Obama about it, and Obama didn't even try to stop him from releasing it. Clooney is not just an actor, he's a big Democrat donor.

Barack Obama Knew George Clooney Was Going to Shiv Joe Biden, Didn't Try to Stop It: Report

It seems like there's a very big and powerful growing faction within the Democrat party that wants Biden out. My best bet at this point is that Biden and his team are looking for what you could call a 'severance package' if he is to step down. So negotiations are being had. Perhaps it will be a big investment from someone into one of Hunter Biden's business entities, something like that. The thing is, Biden has a lot of leverage within the party. He's been in politics for 50 years - he knows where all the bodies are buried. What happens next will undoubtedly be interesting, regardless of how it goes. Regardless, if the Democrats want to beat Trump, they need to get their shit together soon, make a decision, and shame those who choose to continue bucking the party line.

[DJChameleon]

At this point someone needs to invoke the 25th amendment. I don't even think he's stable enough to even finish out the rest of his term. They need to pivot heavy to Harris imo.

[SGR]

At this point someone needs to invoke the 25th amendment. I don't even think he's stable enough to even finish out the rest of his term. They need to pivot heavy to Harris imo.

I understand the sentiment, but don't you think the optics of that would be really bad for Democrats? Invoking the 25th to remove their own sitting president? I mean, from a functional point of view, that's why the 25th amendment is there, but it becomes more complicated when the president you're attempting to remove is currently your presumptive nominee in the midst of an election cycle. Then I suppose there's the question of whether they'd be able to get enough Republican support to remove him, or if Republicans would play politics and vote against the motion out of spite.

If the Dem leadership is dead-set on removing Biden, I think they'd be much better off optically making some moves to get Biden to go out gracefully - on the appearance that it's his decision, and his decision alone. And that he's doing it for the betterment of the people and the country.

[SGR]

Hopefully this will convince Biden to step down

Nice to see you're tuned into alternative media! I'm a big Kyle Kulinski fan as well. I became a Krystal Ball fan back when she did Rising with Saagar Enjeti. They had a lot of really insightful conversations together with different political viewpoints. It was weird to see her and Kyle get together and do their own web series, but they put on good shows too.

[SGR]

[Lisnaholic]

Personally, I'd like a President Rand Paul, so it would make sense I'd like him as VP, but he's not even in consideration as far as I know. I think most politicians are either corrupt or have a lot of baggage to unearth, but I think Rand Paul probably has less than others due to my (perhaps naive) view of him as a good and decent man.

To me, he's a beligerent doctor who votes to block gun control and who is proof of the saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Remember how he spent so much time brow-beating Dr. Fauci, even though RP was way out of his area of medical expertise ? I remember that episode as being a partisan attempt to undermine Dr. F, at a time when Dr.F's advice was needed to help reduce the impact of covid. 

Another one I'd view as a good and decent man is Ben Carson. Despite some of the crazier things he's said, and his wacky religious views, I think at his core he's a good man. Problem is, some of the stuff he's said is so wacky and out of pocket (as is almost inevitable with hardcore Christians), I think he might turn out to be a political liability in a VP role.

At least you put some "despites" for Ben Carson, though you forgot this one: "Despite spending $31,000 of public money on a dining table and when caught out, using that classy Republican go-to excuse, "Oh, my wife is to blame"."

I don't quite see it the same way that you do. There's a quote often attributed to Stalin's secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria that goes: "Give me the man, and I will find you the crime.". I think there's truth to this, in the sense that if a justice system is motivated enough, they can probably find a crime for almost anyone with a team of overzealous prosecutors, especially politicians/government actors. Fareed Zakaria, who has a show on CNN, said this in relation to the hush money case against Trump for example:

Former Democrat Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo said this of Trump's hush money case:

When you have notable people on the left coming out and saying stuff like this, you can see why Republicans might be dubious about the other cases. And that's kind of a problem, because when you're trying Trump for the much more serious crime of trying to overturn an election at the same time you're trying him on a case that's centered around how a legal payment was made, but the reimbursement of that payment was not marked correctly in Trump's accounts, it delegitimazes the other cases, even if it was technically a crime. It doesn't come off for many people as a blind and impartial application of the law, but rather smacks of a case brought for a political advantage (i.e. keeping Trump off the campaign trail, and tied up in court with all the associated legal fees).

That's a great Beria quote ! I read your other quotes as well, especially as I enjoy listening to Fareed's Take. On this occasion, this sentence of his caught my eye:
"But that violation (the one ultimately brought by A Bragg) is one that the Justice Department under both Trump and President Joe Biden looked at and decided against prosecution."
Two quick points: (i) that a Trump Justice Dept declined to prosecute a Trump crime is hardly a surprise
(ii) Bragg's initial decision to NOT prosecute was so controvertial that a couple of career prosecutors involved in the case resigned: those guys thought the case was strong and serious enough.

Which leads to your Cuomo quote; just another opinion about the value of taking up a prosecution for which there is plenty of evidence of wrong-doing. If I'm reading your post right, both you and Cuomo are not mentioning the detail about the hush money payments being linked to misused campaign funds and an attempt to conceal the conduct of a Presidential candidate from the American people in the run-up to an election. That's what makes the case serious.

Continuing with the idea of measured prosecutorial discretion being exercised, you also have, which is pretty unprecedented, former senior Republican White House officials being jailed over defying congressional subpoenas (contempt of Congress). Specifically, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, who are now both in jail on their 4 month sentence. In their defiance of the subpoenas, both tried to make the claim of 'executive privilege' (since they worked directly in the highest levels of the executive branch of the government), but that claim, which is typically respected by the DOJ, was not respected here.

^ A pertinent fact that you fail to mention is that there was, demonstrably, no executive privilege to be applied in either of those cases. To say it "wasn't respected" is very deceptive way to describe something that didn't exist.

Former AG Eric Holder defied congressional subpoenas (during the Fast and Furious scandal investigation), but charges were declined from the DOJ because of executive privilege:

In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner, was found in contempt of congress for defying a congressional subpoena and refusing to testify, invoking her fifth amendment rights, was also not proscuted by the DOJ.

^ I don't know about these cases, so I'll assume you're right.

Some more recent examples - Hunter Biden had defied a congressional subpoena from House Republicans for months, but instead of charging him with contempt of Congress, they held off and negotiated with his attorneys.

^ Hunter B has never run for public office, and the negotiated deal you mention was surely blown apart in court, after which HB was prosecuted over a gun application form "only because his last name is Biden".

And the most unsurprising one, the House held current AG Merrick Garland in contempt for defying a subpoena to release the audio of Biden's interview with Special Counsel Robert Hurr - the vote to charge him over it failed and the DOJ (which Garland is the head of) declined to prosecute him over it, citing, once again, executive privilege.

Yes, not every contempt case for defying a supoena ends up with a charge: a fact that Gym Jordan must be daily thankful for.

All this to say that both parties are and have been flouting conventions, flouting unstated agreements with each other. Both parties have now played their role in taking the genie out of the bottle, and where this goes in the future can't be certain.

I agree with you that if Trump wins, and the Republicans have congressional majorities, they will go after Democrats for their political affiliation. But I disagree that the people they go after will be 'innocent' in a technical sense. Because Republicans will 'find the crimes' to charge them with. They'll pull out that big fat book of laws, and they'll find something. And I believe the Democrats, should they win, will do the same thing to Republicans. That's why I think Trump's campaign team heads fear jail sentences if they lose. I wouldn't be surprised if Biden's campaign team heads have similar fears. It is easy to foresee, if Trump wins, the Republicans issuing subpoenas to Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Mayorkas defies the subpoenas, claiming executive privilege. Trump's DOJ doesn't respect that privilege and decides to throw him in jail for four months. Because that's exactly what happened to Peter Navarro.

It's a sad state of affairs, but that appears to be the direction we're heading. And it's all thanks to continued deepening of political polarization in America.

It's impossible to call either political party innocent, of course, but once again, imo, the degree of manipulation on the part of the Republican party far outweighs anything the Dems have done. There is no Dem alternative on the scale of Comer's explorations of HB, with that fiasco of calling witnesses who were paid double-agents, or who (in a rare moment of honesty) said, "No, there is no evidence here".

Ditto, the conduct of Bill Barr over the Durham Investigation: a blatantly thumb-on-the-scales AG, the full weight of the DOJ, and lots of public money spent trying to prove a non-existant conspiracy theory.

Biden is respecting the outcome of his son's prosecution. There are two degrees of separation between Biden, AG Merrick Garland and special council Jack Smith. If the American public are losing faith in the impartiality of the application of justice, they should notice how one party is by-and-large still adhering to judicial norms and should vote accordingly come November.

[Psy-Fi]

Trump shot on side of the head in apparent assassination attempt at Pa. rally

[DJChameleon]

Assholes missed so mad.

[Trollheart]

That's such a bad move. Had they killed him, fine. But we all know an assassination attempt only gives a president or candidate for president a bump in support. Also, now his supporters can of course blame it on the Dem-run Deep State. Whoever botched that attack may have handed Trump the White House.

And I TOLD the fucker to take careful aim...
 

[SGR]

That's such a bad move. Had they killed him, fine. But we all know an assassination attempt only gives a president or candidate for president a bump in support. Also, now his supporters can of course blame it on the Dem-run Deep State. Whoever botched that attack may have handed Trump the White House.

And I TOLD the fucker to take careful aim...
 

Yup. I think the shooter just won Trump the election. This picture is going to be in history books. The only thing it's missing is an eagle soaring in the sky.

[degrassi.knoll]

Bro the libs calling this a false flag and making jokes about "why couldn't they have aimed better" are making me sick with rage.